Mick Malthouse reveals a ‘diabolical’ salary cap and long-term contracts doomed him from start at Carlton
When coaching great Mick Malthouse took over at Carlton in 2015, he knew he had a huge challenge in front of him, but what he found was a group of players “distraught” over what had been taking place.
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Mick Malthouse says a “diabolical” salary cap position and a series of disastrous contracts to overpaid players consigned Carlton to a long period of failure.
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Malthouse butted heads with the club’s hierarchy on the direction of the list, keen to retain a blend of young kids and experienced talent instead of embarking upon a full rebuild.
As he told theHerald Sun’s Sacked podcast, the club’s list management group was keen to trade off players he believes included Marc Murphy and Bryce Gibbs.
He says being handcuffed with those existing contracts badly hampered Carlton’s development, with the Blues not playing finals since his first season in 2013.
He was eventually sacked halfway through his third season when the club’s powerbrokers believed he could not help the club’s rebuild despite that year becoming footy’s longest-serving coach.
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Finally the club’s long rebuild is paying dividends but a series of poor list management decisions and horror drafts has delayed that process by several years.
“I only had three players who left in that first year and I can remember someone saying you must be satisfied with your list because you only made three list changes,” he said.
“I had a feeling at Collingwood there was about 25 in two years. I hate using the word ‘cut’ because these are young men who have all their life dreamt of being footballers, so I would rather say we have differences of opinion and we move in a different direction. I want to make changes, but I couldn’t do it.
“That wasn’t (football boss) Andrew McKay, but whoever was doing the salary cap and the contracts before that, it was diabolical.
“You wouldn’t have said it was a great football side. and it wasn’t knocking down the door for a shot at a Grand Final. So it needed to be changed dramatically, one was to bring in a new group of players.
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“The ones who were there, were fairly distraught with what had been taking place, and that was something you can get the answer from (then CEO) Greg Swann on that one.”
Malthouse was brought in to bring the Blues their next premiership but after a series of injuries to key players was instead told it was time for a total rebuild.
“The last thing I wanted any of my players to hear was that we were starting afresh, because what does Kade Simpson do? ‘Why I am playing here’? What’s Chris Judd doing, because you have got to give players’ hope.
“The club were pretty big on going to the press with ‘we’re down the bottom, we’re going to start afresh’.
“It was directly the opposite to my thinking. All that stuff should be in house. And you don’t expose the players to thinking that they are going to play for nothing. Not money, I am talking about why play when you are counting down to ground zero if you like.
“We had a difference of opinion, regardless of whether I respect them, I respect the opinion that I wanted to go that way and the club said no we are going that way, and clearly if you are going to have a coach going that way and the club going the other way, you know what the result will be.”
Originally published as Mick Malthouse reveals a ‘diabolical’ salary cap and long-term contracts doomed him from start at Carlton
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